Buma/Stemra Expands Cooperation With ICE To Include Processing Online Music Use

The Dutch authors rights organization Buma/Stemra has the intention to expand its existing cooperation with ICE Services AB to include processing of online use of national and international repertoire. ICE will, in cooperation with Network of Music Partners (NMP), be delivering online services to Buma/Stemra as of early 2015.

In partnership with NMP, ICE Online will be processing data from the online usage of the repertoire that Buma/Stemra represents - both nationally and internationally. With this extension to the existing agreement Buma/Stemra anticipates on market trends which show a significant volume increase of music usage through a growing number of online service providers. In addition, international cooperation with ICE Online brings Buma/Stemra in line with requirements documented in the new European Directive On Collective Rights Management
By opting for an international collaboration Buma/Stemra expects efficiency in investments in high end ICT- systems for processing the massive amount of online music data. Migration of the repertoire database of all members of Buma/Stemra to the ICE database, as a result of the earlier agreement with ICE in 2013, is in the final stages and will be completed in 2014.

Hein van der Ree, CEO Buma/Stemra, sees the cooperation within ICE Online as a logical consequence of the changing market conditions: "We are constantly striving to provide our services to our members as efficient, and cost effective as possible, now and in the future. The collaboration with ICE Online is an important step in achieving a cost-effective and sustainable solution for the processing of all online music usage data."

"This agreement is a milestone in the ICE vision to deliver a broad portfolio of services that enable our customers to focus on their core businesses of licensing and collection. We are very pleased to sign our first online processing agreement with Buma/Stemra, thereby strengthening our long term commitment and partnership," says ICE CEO Carsten Drachmann.

Karsten Dyhrberg Nielsen, CEO of NMP says: 'This collaboration is a very important step towards NMP's mission of offering back office services within offline recorded media and online processing as efficiently as possible at the lowest possible expense, NMP believes that increased cooperation and consolidation of activities is the way forward in our industry and that our close work with ICE and Buma/Stemra confirms this.